How To Hook Up Speakers To Amp

Need to know how to hook up speakers to an amp? Hooking your speakers up to an amp is a quick process. If you know how to match colors, you can hook up your sound equipment rather easily. Read on for some tips on hooking up your speakers.

To hook up speakers to an amp, you will need:

Speakers

An amplifier

Speaker cables

A flashlight

Turn the power off and unplug the amp’s power cable from the outlet. This may seem silly, but it is better to be safe than sorry, especially if this is the first time you've connect speakers to an amp in your life. Make sure the volume on the amp is also turned all the way down, to avoid harsh noises and speaker damage when you turn everything back on.

Match colors. The connectors on both the amplifier and your speakers are color-coded, with each terminal being either black or red in the majority of cases. The speaker cables are also color-coded, usually having the ends color-coded red and black or having the actual wires being copper and silver. The copper wire corresponds to the red terminal. So all you have to do is match one end of a speaker wire to the same color terminals on the amp and repeat the process with the connectors on each speaker.

Ensure the connections are tight. Loose connections mean noise and audio drop-out, so ensure your speaker and amp connections are snug as a bug. If your speaker wires have ends which are made of loose wire, twist them into a hard point before inserting them into the amplifier and speaker terminals. This will avoid stray positive and negative wires touching each other and causing a short circuit.

Test your setup. Turn the amp on and make sure there is something playing. Slowly turn the volume up until you hear sound from the speakers. If you do not hear anything, first check to make sure you hooked up your speakers to your amp correctly per the instructions above. Next, make sure you have the right input source selected on the amplifier, meaning that you don’t have it set to “TV” when your iPod is the one producing the sound. If all this fails, plug a pair of headphones into your amplifier’s headphone jack and make sure that there is not a problem with the device producing the sound, such as the volume on it being turned all the way down.

Tidy up. Once you are sure everything is working properly, it is time to make things neat. Make sure your speaker wires are tucked away, strapped together in a bundle, hidden under the couch…whatever, as long as they are out of sight and unable to be tripped over. If you have dogs, you may want to spray them with some chew deterrent available at your local pet store, as most dogs love to chew on tasty speaker cables!

As you can see, if you are organized and know how to match colors, you can hook up speakers to your amp without too much trouble. If you still run into a problem, read the manuals that came with your gear or call the manufacturers for help.